Planning an Amazon vacation

It's easier than you think, and you should be able to do it for about $3,000, including a flight from the U.S. and staying at a good ecolodge. You need to be moderately physically fit and be able to climb stairs and walk well on uneven surfaces and muddy trails. Here are the main choices for exotic fun:

Ecuador's Amazon in the El Oriente region is a delight of rain forest and animal diversity. It is also simpler than other Amazon trips.

Fly into: Quito is less than a five-hour flight from Houston; take an additional 30-minute flight on Ecuador's AeroGal (modern Airbus jets) to Coca, the jumping-off point for most Ecuador Amazon adventures.

Main tourist areas : Ecolodges along the Napo River, east of Coca. The Napo is a main tributary of the mighty Amazon River.

Could combine with visits to: Quito and the Galapagos Islands.

Popularity : Ecuador had 227,000 tourist arrivals from the U.S. last year, according to Euromonitor International.

Brazil covers 60 percent of the Amazon region, so it offers many cruises and lodges, and it has a big tourism industry.

Fly into: Manaus, a city of 1.7 million. There are nonstops from Miami. Unfortunately, a lot of flights from the U.S. stop first in Rio or Sao Paulo — 1,600 miles south — then backtrack north. You also need a $140 visa to get into Brazil.

Can combine with visits to: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Bel em

Popularity: Brazil had 746,000 tourist arrivals from the U.S. last year, according to Eurom onitor International.

For more: Brazilian Tourism Board, http://www.braziltour.com. Or contact Swallows and Amazons Tours, run by an American and his Brazilian wife, with both lodge and river tours (www.swallowsandamazonstours.com, e-mail: info(at)swallowsandamazonstours.com).

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SPANISH EXPLORERS GAVE RIVER ITS NAME

The wide Napo River, where Ecuador's ecolodges stand, has a famous place in history.

It is where the journey of the first Europeans to traverse the Amazon began.

In 1541, Spanish soldiers searching for gold and spices in the New World left the Pacific coastal town of Guayaquil (now in Ecuador), and headed east. At Coca, desperate and nearly out of supplies, the expedition's leaders sent Capt. Francisco de Orellana and 50 soldiers down the Napo River on rafts as an advance party.

Swept down the whispering, swirling Napo, unable to turn back, they encountered no gold and no cinnamon. But they did pass towering forests and thriving settlements of native people.

The Napo merged into another tributary, then another, until they reached the widest river of all that led them across the continent.

Nine months later, they reached the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, 3,000 miles from where they began.

Today, Orellana is hailed as the man who named and discovered the Amazon. He named it after a Greek legend of a tribe of fierce female fighters.

Although Brazil is most famous for Amazon lore today, this mysterious part of remote eastern Ecuador is the source of the Amazon's most famous journey.